


Night of the Living Elves

by Deannie



Series: Comfort and Joy and Zombies [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: But not grinchy either, Gen, Not particularly pro-Santa, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yes, he <i>was</i> right. Santa was creepy and evil and now they were going to be killed by his elves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night of the Living Elves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kronette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kronette/gifts).



> For Kronette, who asked for: "Santa-like aliens visit Atlantis." 
> 
> With zombies.

“You know, I always thought the Easter Bunny was the black sheep—Santa’s supposed to be the good guy!” Sheppard let off another volley of gunfire at their pursuers. “How’s it going over there, Rodney?!”

Rodney was hidden behind another pillar, and he stabbed away at his datapad with all the frantic energy the situation called for. Which was a lot. “Contrary to popular belief, hacking alien computer systems isn’t as easy as it looks, Colonel.” He shook a cramp from his hand and continued stabbing. “Especially when all of Santa’s elves are after you!”

He sighed as he was blocked again by the Humaran mainframe, and tried to worm his way in through a different hole, wondering where things had gone so wrong.

It actually hadn’t started off as a bad week. Teyla had been introduced to the Humarans by a mutual trading partner, who described them as a “generous and jovial people.” They had a planet full of elk-like animals whose meat was a particular delicacy. They also had craftsmen who made amazing leather-ish products out of not-polar bear hides and pseudo-seal skins.

Rodney reminded himself to read Jensen’s treatise on the biologic similarities among fauna on Earth-like planets in the gate system. When someone wasn’t trying to kill him.

The Humarans were, indeed, a very jovial people. One might even say jolly, in fact. Each and every one of them—even the women, unfortunately—looked like Santa Claus.

> “It’s eerie.” John Sheppard had leaned casually against the outside wall of the Alpha Site’s main building, watching the meet-and-greet going on by the gate.
> 
> “What?” Rodney looked up from his datapad, his gaze flashing from John’s uncomfortable expression to the gathering in the field below. Four men and women stood with Teyla and Dr. Makepeace, wearing bright red suits lined with white fur. And hats with pompons on the ends. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Definitely creepy.”
> 
> “We are glad to make your acquaintance!” the leader of the visiting contingent all-but bellowed. He chuckled his happiness.
> 
> “‘And it shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.’”
> 
> McKay snorted at Sheppard’s whisper.
> 
> “Doesn’t look like jelly to me,” Ronan grunted. He had been perched on a rock about ten yards away and had wandered over in time to hear Sheppard’s last comment. “Just looks like he eats too much.” The pointed look he gave Rodney was completely unfair, given Rodney’s current level of fitness, and Rodney sniffed and went back to watching the Santa Brigade. He saw Ronan smile out of the corner of his eye, like it was a job well done.
> 
> “It’s a reference to a poem,” Rodney began, though he had no idea why he was bothering. Ronan really didn’t care, probably, but the similarity needed remarking on. “ _The Night Before Christmas_.”
> 
> “ _A Visit from Saint Nicholas_ ,” Sheppard put in smugly.
> 
> “What?” Again, Rodney looked up at him, this time in irritation. “The poem is known as _The Night Before Christmas_.”
> 
> “But **titled** _A Visit from Saint Nicholas_ ,” Sheppard corrected again.
> 
> He was probably right, but Rodney didn’t care any more than Ronan did. “Whatever. The point is, it’s the story of a character known throughout Earth and those people are the stereotypical clones of him.”
> 
> Ronan looked down at the gathering, watching as Makepeace gestured to the main hall. The quartet of red-and-white-clad, tall, portly visitors—and you could only tell the two women from the two men because their beards weren’t nearly as full—followed the slight, short anthropologist with evident good cheer.
> 
> “It really is unnerving,” Rodney said quietly, packing his datapad away as Teyla gave the team a significant look and the three men made to follow her inside. “I never trusted Santa, even as a kid.”
> 
> “Ho, ho, ho! That’s _wonderful_ , Dr. Makepeace!” the lead santa chuckled. Rodney shuddered in response.
> 
> John shook his head. “I think you were right with creepy,” he muttered as he passed Rodney on his way in the door.

Yes, he was. Santa was creepy and evil and now they were going to be killed by his elves.

“Anytime, Rodney!” John yelled out at him. Rodney suddenly noticed that he only heard two rifles firing, and he bent to his work with greater attention, wondering where Ronan was. They’d been pursued steadily until they found this room and Rodney had managed to jam the door. Of course, the door was only mostly jammed, and the zombies kept shoving their way through the opening, one by one. It was like Saturday night at the movie theater, only they were the stupid teenagers who just had to go down in the basement.

> The negotiations had proceeded quickly, and Teyla was invited to Humar to visit the workshops where all the lovely trade goods were created. Which sounded like a fine idea until the team actually got there.
> 
> The main workshop was off-limits to most Humarans, and with a major not-polar bear hunt on, the village leading to it was mostly deserted. Rodney was somehow relieved to see that the houses weren’t decorated in candy canes and Christmas trees.
> 
> The warehouse itself, though, gave Rodney a minor and very unsettling flashback to the visit he and his parents had made to one of those Real North Pole parks when he was four. The elves had been rude and bored teenagers with mean grins and plastic elf ears, and Rodney had spent the whole time fearing for his life. Had nightmares for weeks afterward of Santa’s elves coming after him wearing retainers and headgear.
> 
> When Jeannie came along a few years later and his mother insisted that Rodney “keep the magic of Santa alive” for his little sister, he plotted all kinds of elaborate ways to protect her. Not because he believed in Santa, but because if Santa _was_ real, the elves were the ones to worry about.
> 
> And now he was going to be killed—and probably eaten—by them in a galaxy far, far away. Which sort of figured.

His datapad beeped. “I think I have it!” he called out, giving John and hopefully both Teyla _and_ Ronan, a heads up. “Shutting down the reanimation protocol… NOW!”

There was a moment of complete silence.

And then John started firing again. “Nice try, McKay!” he shouted.

“I’m doing my best!” he retorted. Damn, the system had a failsafe. Well of course it did—how else could Santa and all his little undead elves keep making such beautiful toys for the Pegasus Galaxy’s ungrateful kids?

> The craftsmen, as the Humarans referred to them, didn’t look to be the same race as the santas. For one thing, no santa was under two meters tall, and most of the craftsmen were 150 centimeters at best. The santas were portly, while the craftsmen looked all but wasted in comparison, their color gray and unhealthy.
> 
> “Slave labor,” John had growled, tightening his grip on his gun. The craftsmen worked with an almost mindless diligence, and Rodney felt a little sick at the blankness in their stares.
> 
> “I see no fetters,” Teyla remarked cautiously, though Rodney could see her tensing up, too.
> 
> Ronan had a hand on his blaster and Rodney was a little afraid he’d just flicked it to full power. “You can make slaves without chains, Teyla,” he grunted. Oh yeah, this was going to go well.
> 
> “My friends,” Jilsa, the head Humaran, said, his head cocked in a parody of St. Nick’s jolly curiosity. “Is there something wrong?” He threw out his arm to encompass the sweatshop before them. “Do you not think our craftsmen produce the finest goods in the galaxy?”
> 
> “Yeah, at what cost?” John whispered angrily. Rodney watched a little craftsman stand unsteadily from his seat, a finely worked sealskin belt in his hands, and keel over in a dead faint on his way toward a large table in the center of the room.
> 
> Sheppard, being Sheppard, ran to him immediately, and the rest of them followed right behind. Up close, the craftsman looked starved. Did they ever feed them?
> 
> “Where are your healers?” Teyla asked urgently, as John carefully put a hand to the craftsman’s throat.
> 
> Jilsa sighed. “We don’t need a healer.”
> 
> “Sheppard,” Ronan murmured quietly as he rose to his feet with a hand on the butt of his blaster. The warning in his voice was clear.
> 
> Rodney looked around as not one other craftsman in the room paid the fallen worker the least attention. The rest of the Humarans were watching the Atlantis team carefully. The hair rose on the back of Rodney’s neck.
> 
> Teyla had one hand on her gun and the other ready to unclip it, and John stayed crouched where he was, but with that tension about him that said he could be ready to defend himself in a moment. “Yeah,” he replied decisively. He leaned back from the craftsman with a sigh. “Doesn’t matter anyway. He’s dead.”

“I do _not_ want to be eaten by zombies today, McKay!” John growled.

Rodney peered around the pillar and watched more of the undead craftsmen grope their way through the doors and start plodding toward them. Stereotypical santas with stereotypical zombies. How stereotypical.

“They do not appear interested in eating us, Colonel,” Teyla remarked, cutting down two of the shambling ghouls. They both fell to the ground, wriggled a little, and got back up again. Teyla’s arm still dripped blood, but she didn’t seem to be hampered by it.

“Remind me to introduce you to George Romero later!” Sheppard called back. He’d switched his rifle to single shot and Rodney hoped he was aiming for their heads.

The datapad beeped once more. “Okay,” he called out again. “This should work this time!”

He closed his eyes and pressed the bright red EXECUTE on his pad.

> Sheppard rose to his feet, still looking down at the dead man before him. Rodney looked away quickly and turned toward the Humarans. Even he could feel a change in the atmosphere.
> 
> “I do wish you hadn’t witnessed that,” Jilsa sighed.
> 
> “Me, too. I think we can safely say the negotiations are over,” John said blithely, hand back on his rifle.
> 
> “Indeed,” Jilsa replied, his eyes hardening. “And it’s such a shame, too.”
> 
> “Colonel!”
> 
> Teyla’s call of surprise was followed by the dead craftsman opening his eyes and rising fluidly to his feet again. Without seeming to even notice the rest of them, he picked up his finished product and threaded his way through the taller people, placing the belt on the table at the center of the room and returning to his seat to pick up the next piece of hide and get back to work. Ronan drew his blaster and leveled it at the slowly approaching group of Humarans.
> 
> “Zombies,” John breathed.
> 
> Ronan gave him a questioning look. “What’s a zombie?”
> 
> Really? _Now_ was the time to discuss this? But Rodney played along, because he’d just noticed something about the now-not-dead craftsman. There was a dataport at the back of his head. Rodney walked up and, steeling himself, touched the man, sucking in a breath as he felt real dead flesh. “Reanimated corpses,” he told Ronan. Both the Satedan and Teyla went a little green. Rodney looked up at Jilsa. “Nanobots?” He snorted. “Can’t be magic.”
> 
> “Science _is_ magic,” stated one of the women—he couldn’t remember her name. Lisjar or something. “The craftsmen were, sadly, not able to weather the severe climate change here on Humar. They were too small, and their constitutions too frail. Adaptations had to be made.”
> 
> Okay, Rodney was going to throw up now. “So you killed them and then reanimated them so that you could use their knowledge in leather working without having to worry about keeping them alive?”
> 
> Lisjar shook her head. “Of course not, doctor. You take us for monsters—”
> 
> “Hey, if the shoe fits,” Sheppard put in.
> 
> “They began dying when the orbit shifted ninety turns ago. There was nothing we could do. The ones that survive are given room to breed and learn the trade from those we have here. These, like the one you just saw, can only be kept moving for so long. Toward the end, they sputter and fail.”
> 
> “Mostly, I think, because they’re dead,” John muttered unhelpfully.
> 
> The woman looked indignant. Not jolly at all. “The beauty of craftsman works are the lifeblood of our civilization, Dr. McKay,” she said, appealing to him alone. “You can see how we would do anything we could to maintain that?”
> 
> “Not really, no,” he said quietly, feeling queasy. Breeding people to become zombies? It was like a bad B movie.
> 
> “We cannot allow others to discover this,” one of the Humarans said gravely.
> 
> “Oh, of course you can’t,” Rodney muttered. Because again, bad B movie.
> 
> “Sheppard!” Ronan called out again sharply, turning to face the multitude of zombies, a number of whom had finally looked up to stare at the Atlantis team.
> 
> Sheppard shook his head in irritation and drew his weapon, while Teyla and Rodney did the same. He glanced over at Ronan and nodded. Ronan spun around and started shooting at the Humarans, and Rodney found he didn’t care much whether the blaster was set to stun or not. The Humarans had guns, of course, but the first little group of them was on the floor before a klaxon started ringing somewhere, no doubt summoning more of them.
> 
> “Incoming!” Sheppard said quietly, and Rodney turned back to find a few dozen of the craftsmen coming at them. Sheppard shot one down, and Rodney watched the little blue light on its dataport flash for almost a full second before he stowed his machine gun and yanked the datapad off the back of his pack.
> 
> “Rodney?” Sheppard asked, that long drawn out question in his voice.
> 
> “They have to be centrally controlled,” he said quickly. “If I can hack the Humaran computers—”
> 
> Teyla let out a yell, and Rodney looked up to see her bleeding from a cut on her arm. One of the craftsmen had gotten behind her and attacked her with a leather-working knife while she was shooting at the others. “Whatever you are going to do, please be quick about it,” she asked brusquely.
> 
> “Fall back and give him time,” Sheppard commanded, heading for the side of the great hall, where there were hallways that hopefully didn’t lead to more Humarans with guns. The group of attack zombies followed them, brandishing whatever weapon they’d had to hand on their workstations.
> 
> Bizarrely, the rest of the undead continued to make belts.

But no one was making anything now. Rodney listened to the moment of silence, smiling smugly when it became a lot of moments of silence.

“Took you long enough,” Sheppard called to him from his place at one of the other pillars.

Rodney snorted and rose carefully. Just once, he wanted them to get why his job was so difficult. And he _had_ hacked an alien mainframe in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Didn’t he get points for that?

“DEX!” Sheppard’s bellow was unnecessary, as Ronan came out of a side corridor and sauntered up to them, his knife out and really, really disgusting in a _Night of the Living Dead_ sort of way.

“The ones in the main room are all dead, too,” he reported. “Just keeled over at their tables.”

“They were already dead,” Rodney pointed out. “Hence the term zombie.”

John gave him a disapproving look. “What happened with the Humarans?” he asked.

Ronan shrugged. “They’ll all have headaches when they wake up, but they’re alive.”

Rodney sniffed. “And out of workers.” He looked up into three questioning faces. “I fried the nanobots permanently. They can’t reanimate.”

“Is it true?”

They all whirled as a tiny voice sounded from another nearby corridor. A female craftsman with the healthy pink skin of a living person looked up at them all in awe. “Is it true?” she asked. “We are free?”

Teyla stepped forward, that you’re-safe-now smile on her face. “If you wish to leave,” she offered, looking at the rest of them and receiving a collective nod. “We will take you where you wish to go.”

The craftsman nodded. “Away,” she said. “Please.”

*****

The fallout from the Battle of the North Pole wasn’t the “complete diplomatic nightmare” Elizabeth initially yelled at them about it being. They’d taken the craftsmen—whose race name was actually Hanar—to the alpha site and from there, the more than three hundred living Hanarans had chosen to relocate to a tropical planet with plenty of reeds and grasses they could use to continue making their fabulous crafts.

It turned out the Humarans had been putting one over on their trading partners. There were a grand total of one-hundred-and-fifty of them, their race having faired no better in the radical climate shift than the Hunar. Elizabeth, being Elizabeth, had offered to help them either adapt more fully to their new climate, or help them relocate to a better one. Jilsa, embarrassed by being caught and subdued and ruined so easily, was thinking it over.

“You destroyed Santa’s Workshop, you know?” John said blithely, dropping into the seat beside Rodney as he ate his breakfast a week later. “Children everywhere will be crushed.”

“Jeannie used to love Santa,” Rodney replied. “I always knew he’d come to a bad end.” He smiled. “At least I was wrong about the elves—the living ones, anyway. Zombie elves were still evil.”

“Yeah, speaking of elves,” John said quietly. He placed a box carefully on the table before Rodney. “They sent you something. Looks like you didn’t stop Christmas from coming.”

Rodney shook his head in exasperation. “Why does everyone think I’m a Grinch? I don’t hate Christmas—which, by the way, isn’t for another four months—I just think the whole idea of a workshop dedicated to creating handmade toys for selfish little kids is a little far-fetched.”

“Well there’s your far-fetched present,” John said, a little too long-sufferingly. “Are you coming to movie night tonight?” he asked, rising to go and waggling his eyebrows. “ _Day of the Dead._ ”

Rodney studied the present, a faint smile on his face for the film choice. “Sure. Zombies for everyone, right?”

John smacked him on the shoulder and left him in peace. He considered the plain little box for a moment longer before opening it.

To find socks.

How stereotypical.

****  
the end

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of (hopefully) 24 ficlets (500 word minimum) featuring zombies, with or without winter holiday references (Hannukah, Kwanza, etc, gratefully accepted as possibilities). If you want to suggest a ficlet prompt, check this entry of mine: http://deannie.dreamwidth.org/11597.html or leave a comment on any fic in the series. (Obviously, that offer only extends until December 24th, 2015, and I reserve the right to have life intervene.


End file.
